


Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Gift, Letters, Romance, Sisters, church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:46:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary receives a gift that causes a stir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow

“Oh, Nurse Mary, what do you suppose it could be?” Emma exclaimed. A courier had arrived with a large box, thoroughly wrapped and secured, addressed to Baroness von Olnhausen, Mansion House, Alexandria Virginia and Emma was delighting in a mystery of benign proportions; constant wrestling over why God allowed a War like this, what she should do about Frank Stringfellow, how she might discover Alice’s secret were puzzles that exhausted her and for which she hadn’t divined any solution, even with the patient advice and intelligent commentary of Nurse Mary. She had clapped her hands together in delight when the courier handed Mary the box, repeating, “No, ma’am, it’s for the Baroness, says so right here, if that’s you, it’s yourn” when Mary had said there must be a mistake.

“Well, I’ll have to wait to find out since it’s past time for the men to get their meals and Private Harris needs a letter written for today’s mail,” Mary said, trying to shift the bulky package in her arms. “I will have to put this aside to examine later when all the work is done or you can imagine what Nurse Hastings will say,” she ended ruefully.

“Would you, perhaps, tell me before you are going to open it? It’s just, it’s been so long since there was a surprise. I know it’s silly, but it would be so nice,” Emma trailed off. Surely Nurse Mary would deal with the box in her general practical, no-nonsense way. And perhaps the package was only boxes of dried herbs for tisanes or stout twine? There was no guarantee it would be anything lovely or entrancing, an embroidered veil or a silk bonnet in the pale green of early April. Maybe it would be trimmed with white roses.

“If the day allows it, of course. It may be some time though. As we’ve learned, there’s no predicting what a day at Mansion House will hold. Although, I do know that both Dr. Foster and Dr. Hale have two surgeries apiece already planned for the forenoon and I am determined to scrub the walls in the small ward. It’s a disgrace that the men have to lie there and see the evidence of so much suffering on the very walls themselves. I can’t think it helps them to heal,” Mary replied. She couldn’t shirk her responsibilities just to open a package and it was more tantalizing to anticipate the revelation later in the day, when she and Emma would be tired and likely carrying the day’s new troubles—the death of Corporal Thompson, the failure of Dr. Foster’s new procedure and his attendant omnidirectional wrath, Nurse Hastings’s daily dressing-down on just how Mary had failed to execute a dressing change to her satisfaction “Will you never learn, Nurse Phinney? To think the Head Nurse cannot even complete a proper Stanworth! Miss Nightingale would blanch, yes, blanch and recoil!” Then, it would be balm to have a gift, even if it were only full of fresh snowy muslin for bandages from the Assistance League in Boston.

As it was, the day was easier than Mary had thought it might be. Not one man died and Private Cooper was able to walk the length of the ward with only a stick at his side. Corporal Thompson took a little broth. She had redoubled her efforts in the small ward and found it a pleasant room without its spackling of timeless gore. The men had actually given a cheer for her when she dropped her rag in the bucket of dirty water and had stood up straight, her hem damp and her neat hair falling freely around her face. She’d smiled all round and had caught Jed staring at her from the hallway. She’d felt so boldly victorious she’d given him a version of that same smile even as she tried to smoothe the wrinkles from her skirts and he’d smiled back at her, without any mockery. It was a rare expression for him—it lit his dark eyes and changed his face entirely. She thought of that face at a dinner table or turned towards her as they walked a leafy Boston thoroughfare, her gloved hand on his arm. She thought of waking to it in a cool white bedroom and how it might change further as he recalled she was bare to him and his sensitive hands traced her breast and belly, her dark curls. How would that smile feel in a kiss? She blushed then, the rosy-red blush of her young girlhood, and she saw he noticed and smiled again, even more fondly, before he strode off. She thought she heard him whistling down the hall “Hold On, Abraham!”

She was loath to disturb Emma when she saw how intently she was engaged with a patient on the Confederate ward; the boy was young and looked at Emma as if she had hung the moon. Mary found the longer she worked at Mansion House, the less virulent her hatred was of the opposing force while her feelings about the deep and abiding wrongness of slavery only grew stronger. The men and boys in the Confederate ward rarely talked much about their Cause, at least while she was about; they asked for fresh water or something to eat, they wept and called for their Mamas, and often they thanked her, just as the Union soldiers did. Their gratitude was hardly ever pure. It was alloyed with shame or fear, longing for whichever woman meant the most to them, in some cases, revulsion at what they’d been brought to. She had learned how to accept their thanks swiftly and without demurral or making anything much of it, then offered another sip, to call the chaplain or their physician. Sometimes she only laid her hand on a dry, hot forehead or took up a hand too weak to grasp, and wished them Godspeed. She never remembered then which side they had fought on, only that they had fought and lost. Mary herself felt adrift at that instant, before she regained sight of her task and her faith. It had happened that Emma might catch her eye and her look of comprehension was delicate and strong as a silk thread.

Emma had asked so prettily and so eagerly this morning, though, and Mary did not want to disappoint her. The fair-haired boy she was talking to did not appear to be in extremis and might welcome her return, one last sign of her favor, before she left for her home.

“Nurse Green?” she called, softly enough that she might not wake the men sleeping away the long afternoon.

“Yes, Nurse Mary?” Emma answered, rising as she did so. Her skirts fell around her, patterned like a rose garden. Even without her hoops, she seemed the ideal of Southern femininity until you looked into her eyes. They were more often shadowed now. She had developed a way of wrinkling her brow in distress that Mary knew her mother must chide her for. Yet the chaplain seemed to look upon her, day-by-day, with even greater admiration. He had done nothing inappropriate, nor did he seem likely to, so Mary felt she need not speak to him. She did hope he wasn’t breaking his heart over Emma; she had learned there were many ways a heart could break and none were easy to heal.

“If you would care to join me?” Mary asked. Emma nodded a farewell to the boy she had been sitting with and together, they climbed the stairs to Mary’s room.

“I don’t think I ever went in this room when Mansion House was our family hotel only,” Emma said, as they entered. Her expression suggested she had never gone in the room assigned by Matron to be Mary’s because it was small and cramped, better suited to a box-room or the brief stay a ladies’ maid might make. Mary had been happy to get the room at all after sleeping on the floor in the wards, the bench near the front door, or on a straight-backed chair beside an soldier for the first six weeks. Matron had relented then, as Mary was clearly not going to be driven out by poor accommodations. She had endured the imprecations of the vile Mr. Bullen, or the diverse physical realities, equal parts vomit, bile, pus and blood, that seemed to constitute the hospital, and rose every day with a deep breath against the new onslaught. The room was little, but it held a bed that was hers alone and a narrow wardrobe for her few dresses. There was even a table and chair set before one of the two windows. There, she wrote letters—to her dear sister Caroline in Boston, her friends Miss Watson and Mrs. Reverend Abbott, to her husband’s sister Annaliese in Bavaria. 

Late at night, she had recently found herself writing other letters, when she was so tired that dream and waking were only two waves breaking on the shore, first one, then the other. She could not admit in the mornings whom she was addressing; the letters were only ever written to “My dearest love” and she knew it was not Gustav alone who drew that appellation from her now. Such wishes and longings she wrote of, such ardent desire and abiding, encompassing tenderness—she was nearly ashamed to read them in the daylight except that they were so much the truest part of herself, she must then be shamed by the breath she exhaled, the pulse of her blood, the sturdy bones which bore her and the thriving marrow within. She could not burn them or send them. They were bundled together and kept behind the frontispiece of Euler’s _Elements of Algebra_ , a book precious to her but forbidding to any errant visitor to her room. She liked the idea of the wildest dreams of her heart being contained within the nearly crystalline structure of mathematics, her emotions mastered by her mind; she prayed this would be true in life though the changes wrought by grief and the War rendered everything suspect.

Emma’s eyes brightened when she saw the large box, still in all its wrappings, atop the worn counterpane. “You didn’t touch it all day!” she cried.

“When would I have had the time? And then, I promised you I would not open it without inviting you. Truly, I think I would not enjoy the discovery nearly as much without you here. Being the Head Nurse, a Yankee widow in Virginia, it can be… that is, I am often lonely and I have found you to be.. a friend, if that is not too forward to claim on our short acquaintance and even given our differing views,” Mary said. She felt this was another situation she could not have anticipated when she discussed her plan to meet with Miss Dix with Sophy Watson, when she sought counsel from her sister and Mrs. Abbott. To be friends with a young woman who supported the Confederacy with all her heart? She was learning that there were so many more attachments she could form than those she had known among her own family, her own people. 

“Oh Nurse Mary, the same is true for me—I have not had a friend like you before but so much now is new or unexpected, I can’t think it is wrong. People I thought I had understood so well, from my childhood… they have surprised me or deceived me and others, who have had no reason, have been true or kind in ways I could never deserve,” Emma replied earnestly. Mary remembered speaking much the same way when she had been Emma’s age; the War had changed them all in ways untold.

“Then before I open the box, you must agree to call me Mary, at least when we are away from the patients and the doctors, and I will call you Emma if you agree, if we are to be friends,” Mary said firmly.

“Yes, yes, Mary. Now, please, won’t you open the box? I positively cannot wait another minute!” Emma said.

Mary only nodded and set to untying the string and unwrapping the brown paper, then eased the lid off. She saw the smooth cream angle of an envelope first, amid the tissue paper that surrounded what seemed to be yards of fabric. She glimpsed the sheen of ivory silk and the geometric tracing of black thread woven through; she had an idea now of the contents and the sender but she would read the letter first while Emma reached in and gently pulled back the delicate paper.

> “My dear sister,
> 
> I hope you will forgive me for my negligence in writing you. There is no excuse I can claim when your own letters come so steadily from such chaos while I am troubled only by two small boys and their predictable demands, the regular management of my household, the concern for my distant husband. Joseph keeps well and I have shared with him the suggestions you have made since you have become an expert in the care of soldiers. I have made sure, as you instructed, to send more socks and a supply of quinine for his own use. My dear husband asked for me to send something edifying to read as he writes there are endless days and nights spent sitting in camp between battles and he fears the decline of his mental acuity “or that I will become an ornery, ignorant clod” as he put it. I have sent him Thoreau’s _Walden_ , which I know you spoke very highly of, and I was quite bold and sent him a novel, called _Adam Bede_ , from an English author named Eliot. I can only hope that either or both provide him the needed respite and stimulation so that he may return home to me the same man I sent off under the waving flag.
> 
> Sister, I know that what little you did bring with you to Virginia was largely literary, though I suspect you have not much time to read and reflect based on your letters to me. I recall the pang it gave you to choose among your books and decide which ones would be left behind in the glass cases of my library. How much you suffered over whether to bring _La Nouvelle Heloise_ or _Faust_! Now, when I see those books you have left behind, I am inclined to peruse them, though I must admit, I often return to dear Longfellow or Psalms for comfort during these troubled times. 
> 
> As you can clearly see, I have not sent you another volume for your collection in Virginia although perhaps you will rail at me for it. If I must and you write me prettily to ask, I will send you the Erasmus you had thought to do without and the Gauss and LaGrange. I will send some new gloves as well, since I know you are always in need of them and never think to ask. While it gladdened me to see you would not wear deep mourning during your service to the soldiers, I am aware you brought with you only a few dresses in serviceable fabrics and only the one in the blue your dearly loved husband so favored for you. Indeed, you have always been the scholar of us all, even brother George would admit it, and you have under your command German, French, and Latin in addition to the English we were raised to express ourselves in. I learned only a little German from your dear husband, but the first word, and the one I remember best, was the one he used to describe you in your blue silk, “ _Glockenblume_.” It did not escape me that you sought to add a touch of blue to all you wore, here a ribbon or some delicate embroidery. So, I have had this dress made up for you by Miss Sparks, using your old green silk as a pattern and I have also sent a little housewife of needles and fine silk thread so you may alter it as it seems fit to you. I know the dress may seem too fine for the grime and gloom you describe so vividly, but I think there must be a day, perhaps the Sabbath, when you might shed your ordinary calico and pinafore, and wear something that recalls the Baroness von Olnhausen, Mary Phinney of Manchester and Boston, and that you might cheer not only the soldiers and staff who see you, but also yourself, with the remembrance of the constant affection I hold for you and the great esteem your dear husband held for his “Bluebell.”
> 
> With sincere fondness from your elder sister,  
>  Caroline Phinney Russell

“Mary, will you take it out?” Emma asked, almost reverently. What a small but present pleasure that Emma retained her delight in a new dress, even amidst the War and its destruction. Mary unfolded the tissue paper that enfolded the dress and drew it from the box, then laid it out on the bed so they might both survey it. Mary took up the hem to rub the fabric between her fingers—ah, the lovely feel of silk taffeta. The cloth was scattered with pink roses and sprays of bluebells, overlaid with a fine black windowpane. Mary caught the little jest Caroline was making with the choice of material; Mary’s love of geometry and all mathematics was joined with the delicate, romantic beauty of flowers, the conventional symbol of modest womanliness. And the buttons, the cuff, the belt and elaborate peplum, so stylish this season, were all the deepest blue a bluebell could be, Gustav’s favorite flower and hue. Mary thought how he would have liked to see her in a dress like this, walking through the town on his arm, the skirts arranged just so when she sat at his side at church. She heard the low tone of his voice in her ear, “How it suits you, _Liebchen_!” and she felt again the sorrow of her grief. It was not lighter now, but she had gotten better at carrying it. 

“Oh, how pretty!” Emma exclaimed. She reached forward to touch the dress, then pulled back.

“Emma, please, don’t feel you mustn’t touch it,” Mary said. To see something whole and lovely and new was not something to make little of and to share it with a friend was its own gladness. Emma extended her hand and stroked the skirt with her fingertips and Mary saw the little smile that curved her lips.

“It is so finely made, how well it is cut and pieced! The colors are so fresh. I do hope you will wear it soon, Mary, what it change it will make,” Emma said.

“Yes, Miss Sparks, the seamstress, has outdone herself I think. I suspect it will need little alteration. It’s been some time since I had a new dress,” Mary mused.

“May I ask who sent it?” Emma said. 

“Oh, my sister Caroline. I knew when I saw the fabric that it could only be Caroline thinking to send a new dress instead of medical supplies or even a heavier cloak for the winter months,” Mary answered. “She has always liked pretty clothes so much, she would be the first to own her vanity,” she said with a smile.

“She is living in the North, I suppose,” Emma said, a little hesitantly.

“She lives in Boston with her two young sons. Her husband is away with the Army, he is a lawyer by profession, as our father was. I had been living with her family a few months before I came here, after my husband died. It no longer seemed… prudent to live alone, with just a housekeeper and my sister welcomed me quite kindly. The little boys are so busy, they helped to occupy me when I was in danger of becoming mired in my grief.” Caroline had been quite thoughtful about how much Mary helped with the boys; she was adept at telling when Mary needed the distraction of the constant questions and requests, the games and races, and when it was too much a reminder of what she would never have herself. Mary did not let Caroline know the pain that struck her when she heard her sister’s tread in the hall, responding to a cry or a little voice in the night that called for “Mamma!”

“It sounds as if you are quite close, that is, when you speak of her and her family,” Emma remarked.

“We are close, even given the difference in our age. Caroline is five years my elder. We have a much older brother, George, who was our father’s child from his first wife. There were two children between Caroline and me, brothers who did not live past their first birthdays, and another sister who was born when I was myself a baby. She also died of a fever before I turned three. So we were a small family as I grew up, but all the closer for it, I think,” Mary replied. 

“My mother also lost children. A baby girl and we had a younger brother, Charlie, who died when he was eight from a rupture in his belly. It was the only time I saw my father cry,” Emma paused. “Mary, do you worry about your sister? Alone in Boston with two young children?”

“A little. Yet Caroline is a woman grown with an able housekeeper and I know she has her faith and her church to support and guide her in the absence of her husband. It is not my usual position, to worry about her, as she is the elder and has always seemed to me so competent and steady. I was the one she worried over, that I would ruin my eyes with reading or fail to marry, a bluestocking spinster. Our mother was ill for many years before she died when I was only sixteen, and Caroline looked after me like a second mother,” Mary replied.

“And did you like it, that she would mother you and advise you? It is only, I worry about my own younger sister, Alice, I fear for her since the death of her beau. You remember Tom Fairfax? Since his loss, Alice has been… different. My own mother seems distracted by her concerns about my father and brother and, though I can’t understand it, whether the Yankee officers imposing themselves on our house are properly impressed. I fear Alice will do something impetuous, that has always been her nature,” Emma said. Mary could hear her apprehension regarding her sister but also her frustration that her mother was not noticing. 

“I assume you have spoken with your mother and found her response… wanting in some way. I have found, as the younger sister, that I most appreciated Caroline’s advice when she first shared a little of what troubled her, how she might have considered a similar action of response. Even then, I did not always wish to hear what she had to say, but she always said it with so much affection that I could not completely ignore her.” Mary considered the talks she’d had with Caroline, newly married, when it appeared Mary herself would never enter that state. Caroline had advised her to continue her studies “of course you must, or you would not be our Mary, but perhaps you might also attend some of the lectures on lighter subjects, music or Italian sculpture—perhaps it will widen your society and bring you among like-minded folk. I cannot think you will be happy with anyone who is not a scholar, but there are other joys, Mary, and I would be sad for you to forgo them.” 

How right she had been and how skillfully she had guided her! Caroline had always had a sweet temper and did not gloat when Mary introduced Gustav to her, as a scientific gentleman she had met at a lecture on German composers. She had only smiled a little at Mary and been even more charming a hostess than she usually was. Later, Gustav confessed he had been a little taken aback and had wondered if Mary’s married sister had forgotten they had only just been introduced, so friendly and confiding she had been at that first tea. He had laughed a little into the cold night when she told him of Caroline’s advice, lying in his arms in their bed, and had given Caroline a warmer greeting when they next met and thanked her for her wisdom.

“I’m not sure Alice will want to hear anything I have to say, but I suppose I must make the effort,” Emma sighed.

“I have found just as it is hard to tell when a seed will sprout and blossom, so we cannot tell which of our words will act on another’s heart or mind, and how or when. But I think you will be easier within yourself if you find a way to speak to your sister and let her know you would listen. You needn’t say whether or not you will approve,” Mary added as she finished, trying to lighten Emma’s expression. She was happy to have succeeded.

“What does your sister write you? Only news of your family? Or are their other topics she prefers to address?” Emma asked. Mary supposed it made sense she would be curious as Mary had paid far greater attention to Caroline’s letter than to the dress itself.

“Oh, she tells me of her family, how her little ones are faring, and then reminds me, quite politely, to get my nose out of a book and remember that I ought to present myself properly when I am able. Though I can’t quite imagine when that will be, when I would risk wearing this lovely dress,” Mary said.

“You must wear the dress, Mary! I understand you do not wish to wear it on the wards, they can be so dirty, but at least for the church service the chaplain conducts on Sunday, couldn’t you wear it then?” Emma implored her. Emma did not attend the service at Mansion House but she always asked Chaplain Hopkins on Monday mornings how he’d found his congregation and if they had responded to his sermon. It seemed Dr. Summers frequently mistook the opening prayer for a lullaby and snored throughout while Nurse Hastings regularly commented how “sadly lacking, really a shame indeed” Henry Hopkins’s carefully crafted homilies were “compared to what we were used to in the Crimea, where of course, Miss Nightingale, a true Head Nurse, made sure we ladies were well looked after in every regard, from the Lesson to the lemon curd she served at tea-time to ward off scurvy!” 

“You and my sister are cut from the same cloth it seems. It does seem like such a pretty dress belongs to another world, another Mary, not the Head Nurse of Mansion House,” she replied.

“That is why you must wear it, to be that other Mary, just for a little while. The War will end someday and then you will no longer be Head Nurse—you mustn’t get out of practice at being a baroness, I think,” Emma said. “And also, it would do the whole hospital good to see you as a fine lady again, Nurse Hastings’s put in her place. What a horrid woman! I think the sick boys would like to see you thus, and even some of the officers too,” she said and Mary saw the coquette she had been before the War, before Tom Fairfax was a casualty and when he was only the next name on her dance-card, clumsy at the waltz. Mary remembered that though she and Emma had declared a friendship, it was unequal, she a widow and Emma an unmarried girl in need of guidance.

“I don’t know what you can mean, Emma,” Mary stated coolly, hoping to unbalance the younger woman a little. This time, her hopes were dashed.

“I think you do, but as we are alone, I may be bold. I think Dr. Foster would like to see you in such a fine dress, though the calico and plaids you wear now don’t seem to be much of a detraction. Sometimes, I almost want to laugh when he is shouting about something, my mother would swoon to hear him when he is in a lather! and when he catches sight of you—then all the noise stops, just like that, and you can hear the mice scurry in the walls or Major Summers’s snores from three floors away!” Emma laughed.

“Emma! Dr. Foster is a Army physician, the Executive Officer of this hospital, and a married man. Surely you cannot think it proper for me to seek his attentions,” Mary admonished as sternly as she could. Emma had a roguish gleam in her eyes, a piquant contrast to her winsome face, and Mary thought again of Henry Hopkins and how he listened for Emma’s footsteps even as she spoke with him about this man and that.

“It doesn’t hurt anyone to look,” Emma declared. “And, think of the service you might do for the chaplain, Dr. Foster might not interrrupt Mr. Hopkins’s sermon as he generally does, he’d be too distracted by you and all the other members of the hospital could have a proper Sabbath for once,” she added. She looked pleased with herself, convinced she had boxed Mary in with her argument when in fact, she had only brought out into the full sun of the afternoon the conflicted longings that beset Mary late at night, that drove her to write letters she could not deliver, letters that did not deliver her from her torment. 

“When I wear the dress, which I must, I hope I will not be motivated by my own vanity but rather because so thoughtful a gift cannot go unappreciated. Caroline did not send it to me that I might hang it in my wardrobe and worship it like an idol,” Mary replied, striving to sound matter-of-fact. Emma regarded her and Mary wondered what turn the conversation might take when they heard the chime of the clock.

“As you will,” Emma said simply. Then, “I must leave now, I promised I would look in on Private Randolph on my way out but my mother will be very unhappy if I am late for dinner again. Thank you, Mary, for showing me the dress and for the advice.” Emma walked out the door but as she glanced at the dress again, she said quickly and softly, “Oh, what harm could it do? Truly?” and then Mary heard only the rap-tap of her heels along the hall before the sound of Emma was enfolded in the hospital’s general noise.

Mary sat down on the bed, careful to shift over the yards of ivory taffeta. She let her hand rest on the rich blue trim at the shoulder, a sort of feminine epaulet, and saw there was a fine silk fringe as well. Ah, Caroline! To be known so well and yet not at all! Her sister could not have understood that as she sent this dress, to remind Mary of her home, of the love her husband had cherished for her, that she would force her to consider what future she wanted, even if Mary knew she might never arrive there. She imagined Jedediah’s reaction to seeing her in such clothes, if she were his wife joining him at the breakfast table or getting ready for church. 

She thought he would smile and praise her, play at appraising at the fabric’s worth as an excuse to stroke her sides, her wrist in the neat blue cuff, perhaps even to graze her breast as he counted the buttons. His eyes would shine, proud to have such a pretty wife. He would tease her that she must have her geometry even in her flounces. She could not see how she might ever stand there, beside him in a polished front hall redolent of lemon oil, telling him to be patient as she tied the ribbons of her bonnet and then turning up her mouth for his gentle, serious kiss. Already, even as far away as she was, he had a woman designated for that position and it was not Mary, no matter how she thought he regarded her or what tone he took when they ran out of hospital matters to discuss and yet kept speaking, only to hear the other.

Or perhaps she was wrong and it was only she who longed. What would it be like to wear such elegant attire, to parade herself before him truly, and to find only a polite smile and some commonplace remark or a jest he would have made when she first arrived, “Make way for the Baroness, boys, she won’t want to sully her silk skirt.” If he should not notice her when she sought his attention, she would salt her own wound. But if he should, what could come of it? If he spoke beyond the boundaries of society, even beyond ones they had followed, to call her lovely or charming, to reach toward her arm—what then? She shook her head at it and felt the weight of her carefully braided hair. He was not a giddy boy to make love with words and his head wasn’t turned by a pretty girl; she had never seen him attend much to Emma, unless she was assisting him, nor the visiting sisters of the corporal from Connecticut with their bright curls and rosy cheeks. He’d raised an eyebrow at the prostitutes as they sashayed through the halls but had only interviewed the one whose rash was visible at her throat and across her cheek, the one with the dragging left foot he’d told Mary no tonic could cure. He’d been solemn then without a hint of libidinous intrigue though it was pity, not disgust, that she’d heard when he spoke.

Emma had said “It doesn’t hurt to look” but it did. It hurt to look at him and know she could not even name her feelings to herself. It hurt to look at him and wonder who he saw now—the widowed Baroness, the Head Nurse, his former warden? Or a colleague, a comrade, perhaps a friend? She didn’t want the new dress to catch his eye; she could admit she was afraid he would speak and afraid that he wouldn’t. She existed in a half-world, a place of shadow where she loved, so much and so fiercely she did not know herself, and wished and grieved as inhalation and exhalation. What could she do but live? All week, the letters seemed to write themselves from her pen, more direct and fervent than ever before, and yet still her hand stopped before it could draw the first billowing curve of a “J.”

She wore the dress that Sunday. She must consider the intention behind it more than its unexpected effect; it evoked her sister’s love and the sweet memory of Gustav’s delight when he saw a field of bluebells. Mansion House was a place of monotony, mutton and parsnips always boiled, gangrene followed by ether and then the knife; her appearance was news of the greatest import since the arrival last week of a crate of lemons. Skirmishes and battles yielded the same results, maiming and death, but the lemons meant switchel and fritters and the gold zest sprinkled in the tonics Mary prepared. Her arrival in flowered ivory taffeta meant a studied courtesy from Hale, his loud “ _gnädige Fräulein_!” announcing her. He was incorrect and questionably sincere, but his declaration and the Prussian clicking together of his polished boots meant Nurse Hastings’s spite “for a piece of frippery, really, Byron!” and Jedediah’s scathing mockery, “Wrong again, Hale, did you learn German from a peasant? She is _die allergnädigster Baronin_ , if you are going to ignore New Hampshire as well as Miss Dix.” Chaplain Hopkins only sighed a little, resigned to an even more unruly congregation than usual. Matron observed them all, apparently highly entertained but not inclined to commentary. The usual milling about that preceded every Sunday church service ensued, the orderlies uncomfortable in their high collars and few freemen and contraband who chose to attend standing apart. Anne Hastings made her rounds like a belle at the height of her Season.

Today Anne, like a jealous child at a party unable to vent her ire by pulling at Mary’s sash or breaking her new doll, sidled over to where Mary stood quietly near Jedediah. There had not been even a moment for him to utter a word before Anne started in again. “Dear Dr. Foster, good morning! How pleasant to see you have joined our small flock today—I suppose your experiments do not… beckon?” Anne’s tone was arch and censorious, an uneasy amalgam. Mary noticed the matched gold bracelets Anne wore as she gestured and wondered who had given them to her and why she had worn them to the simple church service.

“Ever astute, Nurse Hastings,” Jedediah replied. He did not seem to wish to engage in the usual verbal fencing that indicated a cheerful mood but he didn’t appear unduly downcast either. 

“Well, then, let us hope Chaplain has prepared a text which will stimulate your mind, though it would be a rarity. Never have I heard more anodyne, more overworked conclusions, no real intellectual challenge. I can only imagine the qualtity of the seminary the man attended,” Anne went on. Mary felt her own temper rise then, thinking of the work Henry Hopkins took on, never refusing even the lowest request, sitting late into the night with scared men facing oblivion. She thought of how he had prepared Tom Fairfax’s body for the funeral by himself and how he had looked when she saw him walk out of the dead room. 

Before she could construct a rejoinder, however, Jedediah responded instead, briefly, “Indeed.” It was a clear directive to abandon the current line of condemnation and Anne noted it, returning to what Mary suspected, without too much doubt, was her original intent.

“And what do you think of our Head Nurse this blessed Sabbath? I can’t think we have ever seen her so elegant, such nobility in the line of dress, the quality.” Mary heard something then that made her think Anne was also driven by the same impulse Emma had had towards a pretty new dress, but it was filtered through her ever-present enmity. “You, Dr. Foster, you have travelled widely, as have I, you can surely appreciate such a change in aspect, how well she looks,” Anne added. Mary was uncomfortable, both at Anne’s scrutiny and the knowledge that she would now be required to hear Jed’s opinion in Anne’s presence. It would not be the spontaneous exclamation he would have made to her were they alone or at least separate and it was all she could now expect.

“She looks the same to me,” Jedediah said. The words were unadorned and clearly not what Anne had expected, though she was delighted by what she inferred and the sudden stillness in Mary’s face. Mary couldn’t read Jedediah’s expression and beyond that, she found she didn’t wish to try. She felt the brevity and finality of his words like a ferrule’s strike to the tender palm. She made some sound, a murmur to excuse herself, and walked sedately to the makeshift pew she habitually sat in. Her heart beat no faster, but it seemed with every contraction, she felt the emptiness of rejection, the shame of unfounded expectation ring through her like a great iron bell. How it hurt to feel the lack of recognition! The bitterness was chased with the venomous sting of her own misperception; she looked the same to Jedediah, but she no longer knew who she saw across the room, so handsome and formal in his officer’s uniform, dark beard neatly trimmed. He saw her glance and walked to where she sat to join her. She could not even imagine a reason and sat with her hands folded in her lap.

“God has his work cut out for him with Nurse Hastings if he means to make good on his promise of universal forgiveness. Perhaps Hale’s braver than I give him credit for, the lout—he’s nursed that viper to his manly bosom and managed to survive,” Jedediah said sardonically. He lounged a little in his chair and she saw the crisp crease of his pressed trouser as it fell away from the crest of his knee. Mary said nothing. He turned towards her and she heard him take a breath, make an indeterminate sound that had only the faintest shape of a word.

“Oh, Mary, you thought—you have misconstrued me,” he said. His voice was low, meant for her alone. He paused and she ventured to look at him. He had an abstracted expression that she recognized but there was something else, something she could not name. Then she saw decision and his dark eyes were focused only on her face. “Do you know, Mary, I was a terrible Sunday School scholar. Really, I admit it—I’d interrupt and pull on Sarah Robbins’s braids. I once brought an entire bucket of frogs fresh from the creek to show that a plague of them wouldn’t be so bad.” Mary could not divine where this line of discussion was headed, but she appreciated the memory of Jedediah as a boy, too smart for his own good and always ready to challenge authority. Becoming the Executive Officer must have jarred him more than he could say.

“Our Sunday School teacher started with Genesis. I suppose it made sense for children, instead of Mark or Matthew, there are plenty of wild beasts and adventure, those secrets. When I was a little boy, I thought Adam was the greatest fool for eating that apple. God had told him not to and he broke the rule-- but not even cleverly. I spent the majority of my time making sure I wouldn’t get caught or that Ezra would be the one with the greater share of the blame, I couldn’t countenance how Adam could be so stupid,” he went on.

“As I grew older, I thought I understood it. Who could resist the lure of wisdom? To know what God knows? God seemed selfish to me, he had made Adam like Him, but then told him he must always stay a child. It was familiar to me, my own father—well, he also preferred to reign God-like in his heaven and brooked no interference,” Jedediah said. Mary nodded, to indicate he should go on. “There were times, with the morphine… I thought the needle had become the serpent, the steel bit me like a fang… I thought I was repaid for my sin just like Adam, exiled… But I think differently now, about Adam and the apple, why he took it. Do you want to know what I think?” he asked, so quietly, yet every word was distinct in her ear. He was grave, without a hint of the jesting humor he so enjoyed. She thought she did want to know, even if she would be stricken, if she would suffer for it.

“I think Adam took the apple because it was Eve who offered it, his beautiful Eve who wanted him to share it with her. She was made for him and he loved her so, I think he would do anything to be with her, to make her happy, even if they risked everything… She was irresistible to him,” he said. He was looking at her intently and she knew he wanted her to understand. But now he was less willing to trust to his words alone, where the meaning was layered and even his tone, the shape his mouth took as he formed the words was part of the whole. As he had spoken, she had felt the sweetest rush throughout herself and she knew he must see it in her face, though she hardly smiled, but he had taken her left hand in his, hidden in the folds of her wide skirt, and clasped it tightly. He could not declare himself any more. She felt dizzy with it and also invincible.

“Mary?” he asked hesitantly and the question was the kiss he could not give her.

“Yes, Jedediah,” she replied and she meant every yes she might give and even some she ought not. “Perhaps I should have studied my Bible more and my mathematics less, my mother and sister certainly thought as much… I would have remembered Proverbs ‘open thine eyes and thou shalt be satisfied.’ But now, we must hush, for Chaplain Hopkins means to begin and we must set the tone, I think, the Executive Officer and the Head Nurse, for surely Dr. Summers will not,” and she gestured delicately to where Summers sat, head already nodding. Henry Hopkins stood at his makeshift altar and he looked squarely at her, an assessment and an inquiry. She nodded, just a little, and saw the calm take him that he found only when he was preaching. 

Jedediah held her hand the entire service. It was exhilarating and soothing at once. She thought she might write tonight when she was fully awake, when she would write “dearest” and know who she meant. Perhaps there would be a time the letters could he shared. Perhaps he would someday touch more than the outline of her ringless fingers, stroke more than the center of her palm. He might say more than he had dared today as they walked from the room that was losing its churchly hallow, his visage stern to belie the murmured words, “You’re the loveliest woman I’ve ever known, Mary, the most adorable.” He had not been able to cool the ardor in his gaze but in the bustle of departure, only she had seen.

Emma had been wrong. It hurt to look. But Mary remembered how Adam had taken Eve by the hand as they walked from the Garden; they had not been lonely. When they lay together in the wide, empty world, with only each other for warmth and the dark night sky teeming with stars they thought might fall and bury them, they had understood what it meant to be naked.

**Author's Note:**

> I got a bee in my bonnet that Mary should get a beautiful new dress sent from her sister in Boston and that Emma would like to watch her open it, then would cajole her to wear it in front of Jed to get a reaction from him. That turned into this story, so other concepts clearly also insisted on being explored. I haven't thought that it belongs in either the Daffodil Universe or Mercy March, though I suppose it is on a continuum with the story where they all receive packages (which I call Parcel Post in my head-- I have headcanon for my headcanon). It's really worth cutting and pasting the link to see the actual dress this story is based on. I have also tried to include a little incipient Emmry as well as giving Mary and Emma some quality time together. 
> 
> Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts, who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. She wrote “Patterns” from which the title is taken:
> 
> “…The squills and daffodils  
> Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.  
> I shall go  
> Up and down,  
> In my gown.  
> Gorgeously arrayed,  
> Boned and stayed…”
> 
> Mary quotes Proverbs 20
> 
> "Hold on Abraham!" is a popular song dating from 1862, during the time of the American Civil War. The song is fast paced and repetitive. The lyrics were composed by William Batchelder Bradbury.The song was supposedly written as a response to president Abraham Lincoln's request of three hundred thousand more Union soldiers. The first verse and chorus are:  
> We’re going down to Dixie, to Dixie, to Dixie,  
> We’re going down to Dixie, to fight for the dear old Flag;  
> And should we fall in Dixie, in Dixie, in Dixie,  
> And should we fall in Dixie, we’ll die for the dear old Flag.  
> Hold on Abraham,  
> Never say die to your Uncle Sam;  
> Uncle Sam’s boys are coming right along,  
> Six hundred thousand strong.
> 
> Elements of Algebra is an elementary mathematics textbook written by mathematician Leonhard Euler and originally published in 1765 in German. Elements of Algebra is one of the earliest books to set out algebra in the modern form we would recognize today. Written in numbered paragraphs as was common practice till the 19th century, Elements begins with the definition of mathematics and builds on the fundamental operations of arithmetic and number systems, and gradually moves towards more abstract topics.
> 
> Mary’s dress https://www.pinterest.com/pin/149041068896335574/


End file.
